Ecommerce Roundup: Flipkart Pats Itself For Being Favourite Of Sellers; Amazon Says 30% Of Orders Coming From Prime Members

In today’s e-commerce roundup, we will tell you Amazon India’s observation regarding Prime members in India, and their analytical view about cash transactions in India.

Meanwhile, we will showcase how Flipkart is patting their own backs, as they are claiming that they have become online sellers’ most favourite platform. But it seems that not all sellers are agreeing to this claim.

Amazon: Prime Users Contribute 30% Of all Orders

Amazon Prime is indeed a big deal. In the US, 40% of all Prime users spend more than $1000 per year, meanwhile, only 8% of non-Prime users do that much of shopping. Globally, Prime members spend 4.5 times more than what non-Prime members shop. Around 65 million Amazon Prime users globally shop $5.75 billion worth of goods, per year.

But, is the same trend being witnessed in India as well?

In an interview, Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has claimed that in India, 30% of all orders are actually coming from Prime members. And fashion and consumables are the two fastest growing product categories when it comes to Prime members.

In fact, during Q1 2017, shopping done by Prime members has increased by whopping 85%, compared to the same phase, last year.

Amit also shared the fact that cash on delivery has reduced drastically ever since demonetization was announced. However, he didn’t reveal how much transactions are actually happening on Amazon Pay, their newly launched digital wallet.

Flipkart: We Are Sellers’ Favourite Platform

Meanwhile, Flipkart, which is all set to merge with Snapdeal (they have already appointed Goldman Sachs as their consultants for this massive deal), has now unleashed a major drive to impress online sellers.

In a statement issued yesterday, they have claimed that Flipkart is now sellers’ favourite platform. As per them, due to lowering seller’s fee in certain categories, they are now offering discount up to Rs 20-25 per unit, which has made them as the favourite platform for sellers.

Interestingly, gold is the niche which Flipkart is focussing right now, and offering heavy discounts to Gold sellers.

Nishant Gupta, director of marketplace, said, “When we reduced rate cards, we reduced fixed fee, shipping fee and collection fee and also offered a 10-20% discount for gold and silver (tier I and II category) sellers”, adding, “Sellers we have interacted with have confirmed our assessment of it (the change affecting on cost of doing business). Gold sellers will be earning a lot more on Flipkart now..”

If we believe an ET report, then 30% of all vendors on Flipkart are right now selling gold.

But sellers are not that excited with Flipkart’s claim. As per some sellers, Flipkart has reduced prices for some products, in some categories; and in some cases, they are costlier than even Amazon.

A spokesperson from Ecommerce Sellers Association of India said, “They have reduced prices for very few categories and for a specific price range. Even with that, Flipkart was minimum 10-15% costlier than Amazon (before the latter’s fee change)..”

Mohul keenly observes the nuances of Indian startup world; and tries to demystify the secrets behind Technology, Marketing, Mobile and Internet. He is a Writer by passion, Marketer by choice and Entrepreneur by compulsion. Follow him on Twitter here: @_mohul